PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 19 November 2018

Empathy and the brain

Empathy and the brain

Chapter:

(p.195)
Chapter 12 Empathy and the brain

Source:

Understanding Other Minds

Author(s):

Cade McCall

Tania Singer

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199692972.003.0012

The ability to feel what others are feeling is basic to human social life. In recent years, neuroscientists have begun to study empathy as distinct from other affective phenomena or mentalizing. Together this research demonstrates that empathy occurs in a variety of domains and is modulated by both context and dispositional differences. Research further suggests that vicarious feeling relies upon many of the same neural networks that represent direct experience. This chapter provides an overview of the field. Focusing on empathy for pain, we describe different experimental methods and their findings. We hone in on several cortical regions which are frequently associated with empathy, the anterior insula and the cingulate cortex. We further present evidence for the link between empathy and prosocial behavior. Throughout the chapter, we highlight unanswered questions and propose future avenues for research.

Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 19 November 2018